One of the questions of old regarding giraffes are, do they sleep standing up or lying down. The answer is a complicated yet simple one, very similar to that of the chicken and the egg.
Some say they sleep whilst going about their daily business...others say they dont sleep at all...others, lying down and others standing up. So which is it?
OK so its not a question of old...just me rambling on and on not knowing the non complicated answer to the question.
So here it is. Rather interresting.
Anyone who’s pulled an all-nighter(or simply stayed up a little too long past his or her bedtime on a school night)is well aware of just how much sleep we need to function well(and how even a small deficit can throw us off our game). For reasons we still don’t really understand, our brains seem to need a lot of time to reboot.
But in the wild, animals’ sleep patterns have evolved along different lines. For them, sleep comes at a steeper price(one that must have affected our distant ancestors, too): vulnerability. Even successful predators don’t sleep the way humans do—deeply, essentially undefended, and at one long stretch. Lions, the apex land predator in Africa, rest up to 20 hours a day, but there’s a reason we call short, easily-interrupted rests “cat naps”; cats are ready to spring to action much more quickly upon waking than you or I.
Giraffes, though, may be the strangest sleepers in the Serengeti. As babies, they lay down with their legs tucked beneath their bodies(lowering themselves to the ground is a serious process)and rest their heads…on their rumps. Apparently, they’re their own best pillows!
Adult giraffes occasionally sleep like this, too, but rarely for more than a few minutes at a time. In fact, they almost never sleep for longer than five minutes at astretch